LR Names 2011 Leading Lights Winners

NEW YORK -- The winners of this year's Leading Lights awards were named Tuesday night at a gala dinner held in Manhattan's amazing Hudson Terrace.

So, who won? If you're a Light Reading registered user, find out by clicking right here. If you're not a registered user, click here to sign up. It takes just a minute, it's free and you get plenty of access to great content all year long.

Good point. I believe the thinking was that even though it was a technology submitted as a product, we were impressed enough to stretch the bounds of what is normally defined as a product in this category.

That is, of course, utlimately up to the category judge to decide how much it utlimately matters whether the product will be sold to other suppliers or if it will simply be a component in several network devices.

"It's hard to ignore a product that represents a quantifiable leap ahead. The FP3 will allow dual 100Gbit/s router cards in 2012, adding to what's been a strong 100Gbit/s story for AlcaLu's router franchise."

Yes, understood. That was more of a general comment for the vendors who did spend a lot of time this week stomping sour grapes into fine whines. It is astonishing how, as much as we try to celebrate the industry's success in a meaningful way, we spend the next few says dealing with overtures of foul play and negativity.

It's obvious we don't work for any vendor and we do impress easily when the presentation of the technology is impressive. It's also true our editors, in hindsight, clearly should have done more due diligence in this category.

But careful about coming down on us too hard. If we're gullible and as easily led as you suggest and STILL your company couldn't convince us, then they're doing a pretty horrible job.

Anyway, I do appreciate the criticism and hope that next time you'll come forward with it earlier in the process -- like when we're putting out our thoughts on the shortlisted finalists.&nbsp;

Different vendors utilize the processors in different ways - some companies&nbsp;utilize the processors&nbsp;to do full layer 2 and layer 3, while others don't.&nbsp;

A&nbsp;better gage is the number of ports&nbsp;the chip (chips,&nbsp;in&nbsp;FP3's and Trio's&nbsp;case)&nbsp;can handle along with the feature/functionality, such as moving video processing off of the services card and onto&nbsp;the line card:

I think you mean to say you can't ONLY evaluate a network processor by speed. You can use speed as a consideration. You can also use market power and market share as indicators of whether a new tech will be successful.&nbsp;

I do agree, though, that you have to look more at how a processor is used vs. its speed and other such metrics in isolation. Again, another great comment I'll send along to the category editor.&nbsp;

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